


Remembered

by Cardinal_Daughter



Category: Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hellsing Ultimate OVA, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Romance, Madness, Pining, Romance, Thirty-Year Absence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 04:37:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8387449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cardinal_Daughter/pseuds/Cardinal_Daughter
Summary: She closes her eyes and tries to remember Alucard. 
He's not as clear as he used to be.  Integra tries to keep the image of Alucard fresh in her mind, to maddening results.





	

**Author's Note:**

> First Hellsing fanfic. I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Mistakes are my own. Apologies in advance. 
> 
> I do not own Hellsing/Hellsing Ultimate.

**_ Remembered _ **

A year passes, and she can see his face almost as well as she sees her own when she looks in the mirror. The sharp edge of his jaw, the sharper points of his teeth. His long, elegant nose, and those piercing- sometimes sad, always haunting- eyes.

She remembers his height, towering over even her long frame. She'd been a column for so long, holding everything in place that it's only now she realizes she'd had a stronger force keeping her upright.

She remembers the frost in his touch and the heat it inspired when he would ghost his fingers across her skin, tuck her hair behind her ear. She remembers the wicked grin as he whispered offensive, blasphemous, delicious secrets into her ear, and she can hear him as easily as she sees him.

Which makes the fact that he _isn't_ here all the more troublesome.

After three years, his voice is distant, and she can't quite recall which way he tilted his head when he was amused. She thinks it was to the left. She practices in the mirror but neither look right to her and she sighs.

After five years, she only sees him in her dreams, and he's more of a shadowy figure than man. Though he's hardly ever been just a man.

One night, one the sixth anniversary of his... death? Disappearance? Defeat? Integra pulls out a box of mementos she'd kept hidden in her private safe, rummaging through the items in a moment of weakness. Or nostalgia. She's not sure which.

Integra has never been a sentimental woman; for all her wealth it was something she could never quite afford. But despite the cost, she is sentimental now: for Walter and for Alucard. She hates them both, though not nearly enough as she knows she should. Despite his betrayal, Walter had been everything to her. Butler, friend. Father figure. He'd all but raised her, and she'd long since accepted that she loved the man, cherished his council and respected him greatly.

In the end, it had all been for naught.

Alucard, on the other hand, hadn't meant to betray her. It had been outside his control and she knew he'd done everything to protect her, to obey her final request. In the end he'd been too weak, and now she is here, alone save for Police Girl, rummaging through a box of memorabilia while she tries to remember her self-made vow to never get drunk.

Like them, she's going to fail.

She has a few photographs of Walter. One of the two of them when she was seventeen and graduating high school- early and as valedictorian. Walter had been so proud.

She has a photo of the Knights, taken from a newspaper article that she'd torn out as a reminder of their brave duty and sacrifice.

She has a few other small tokens. The butt of her first cigar, a photo of her mother, her father's signet ring.

She has nothing of Alucard's.

She has his coffin in the basement below: she ordered his room to remain untouched, and though she hasn't gone down to inspect, she knows that no one dare so much as dust away a single cobweb.

She can see Walter in the photo, can remember the kind words and wise advice and quiet reserve that had done well to hide his ulterior motives. She can see him plain as day before her, and she feels the wounds he caused afresh.

She closes her eyes and tries to remember Alucard.

He's not as clear as he used to be.

She'd never thought to photograph him- couldn't have even if the thought had crossed her mind. He'd not have shown up on film, which is a real shame, for he was a handsome man and looks little like his human counterpart had all those centuries ago.

She should have commissioned a portrait of him, but she knows- and can't help but laugh- that he would have tormented the poor soul stupid enough to take on that task.

It's left to her, then. As most things are.

She finds her old notebook full of drawings she'd made as a young girl. She finds her charcoal, settles herself down, and does her best to draw Alucard from memory.

It's rusty, just as is her handiwork.

She frowns when she finishes, hand stained black as she looks at a face that isn't quite right.

She pulls the page out, tosses it behind her, and starts again.

By the tenth year of his disappearance, she's finally mastered him.

It's the only way she can remember him now. She can't see him like a ghost in the halls anymore, but on paper he's tangible, as real as can be. It's not enough but it'll have to do.

She draws him frowning, smiling, laughing. She draws him with lips and fangs drenched in blood and she draws him in a way that she thinks he looked at her once, when they were alone and the war had yet to rain down on them.

She draws him sitting, standing, asleep in his coffin. She draws him with a look of thoughtfulness and she draws him with bloodlust in his eyes.

She draws him with lust in his eyes and has to throw that one away because it's simply _too much._

Seras watches her sometimes, knows better than to comment on the fact that her master has drawn the Count countless times. Slowly, her bedroom runs out of room on the walls and she orders Seras to hang them in her office.

Then the guest room down the hall. Then the one across from that. Then the drawing room, library, hallway, and eventually the kitchen.

His image is everywhere, and by the time twenty years have passed, the house is a living homage to the No Life King, and Seras nor the cook nor the maid can turn a corner without seeing Alucard's image, staring, mocking, smiling, haunting.

The most private images remain in her room. Drawings of Alucard with softer eyes, with wicked smiles adorn the walls of her private abode. She draws him everyday, a new piece for her collection, a further descent into a madness that no one but those closest to her begins to see.

She carries on by day, a real soldier if ever there was one. But by night she is his, trying to bring him back to life in the only way she can. Her hands are permanently stained black, and she takes to wearing black gloves since the charcoal runs off on her white ones, staining them irreparably.

As time goes on, she ages, slowly but the signs are there. She spots a strand of silver in her platinum locks, and she spots laugh lines around her lips.

Odd, considering she hasn't laughed in over twenty years.

But Alucard stays forever the same. She draws him as an older man once, when slightly drunk on her forty-seventh birthday, and the sight of him with a touch of age to his features makes her so angry she throws her drink onto the paper, ruining the drawing.

She doesn't feel better for it either. She wishes she could have actually hit _him_.

Seras and Pip watch in silence as the lady of the mansion continues on, looking almost as vampiric as her fledgling. She's pale, eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights and stress and perhaps a glass too much of gin. But they say nothing, merely watch as Integra continues her valiant watch over England, working tirelessly with the new Knights and with the Queen, an always alert watchman on the wall, ready to defend her country no matter the cost.

They would ask who watches the watchmen, but they both know the answer to that is Alucard. But he isn't here, so they do it in his stead, always right there, never called upon, but ready just the same.

They don't have anything else to do.

By the time twenty-nine years have passed, Integra has long forgotten the sting of Walter's betrayal. She can walk the halls and not think of him, can barely remember what he looked like.

She doesn't open her box of memorabilia to refresh herself of his image.

Alucard however, is both distinct and blurry. She can't remember his voice though she remembers his first and last words to her with eerie precision:

_Are you the one who awakened me?_

_I fear I must disobey you._

She draws those moments too, images smeared from the tears she can't order to stay put. She draws his corpse, tied to the wall; she draws him in all his heathen glory, devouring her uncle and his men in what had been her first glimpse of the horrors of the war her family was sworn to fight.

She draws him in his last moments, beautiful and ethereal, untouchable as he had always been in some way.

She hates him and she loves him and a castle full of his likeness is all she has left of him.

No one comes to her home; no one is invited. And so no one sees the shrine the Hellsing family home has become to its most powerful weapon and most beloved companion. No one would understand. Those that see it up close don't understand.

 _No one understands,_ Integra thinks as her hand moves in the familiar pattern that stroke by stroke reveals Alucard's face. _I am, and have always been, alone._

Three days after the thirtieth year of Alucard's- death? Disappearance? Integra still can't decide- she retraces the steps she made as a girl to the dungeon. It reeks of mold and death and old memories, and Integra pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket to shield her senses from the smell.

In certain moments, she thinks she can smell Alucard.

She finds the dungeon, the blood of her uncle never completely cleaned up, and she stands in the dried spot that Alucard hadn't drank up in his thirst and feels a brimming sort of satisfaction. Her first battle, fought and won here.

But back then she'd only thought she was alone. Now she knows she is.

She has others, and she has grown to love them and cherish them, but she is jaded from war and death and loss and betrayal. She embraces them but at arms length; none of them can get too close: not like Alucard had.

She ventures to his room, the throne upon which he lounged covered in dust and practically falling apart. She swipes the dust away with her handkerchief, watches as it settles back in the same place, then sits.

She can almost feel him here, and wonders why it took thirty years to muster the courage to come down here.

_Because seeing this empty room only confirms what I've tried so hard to deny for thirty years._

Alucard isn't here.

She walks back up stairs, covered in dust and cold in a way that she hasn't been in years. She blinks as the light hits her eyes, dim though it is, and stares, transfixed and haunted at the sight of a thousand Alucard's before her. She blinks, breath catching as she stares at him in all his black and white glory, and feels the despair that she's kept at bay all this time finally burst through the seams, and with a scream she lurches forward and rips the pages off the wall.

She rips, tears, destroys. She pulls the images apart, elegant drawings falling to the ground like ash under her fiery rage.

When she has no more drawings left in her reach she moves on, yanking them as she goes. She doesn't waste time ripping them all, but the sound of paper being ripped from its display is comforting.

She retreats to her room and the seductive, longing glances of Alucard assault her and she rips them to pieces too, anger blurring her vision (or is that tears?) as she does so.

When she's done, she stands amongst the ruins of three decades of labor. Alucard in every form has been destroyed, and she feels the loss anew, but also feels a weight lifted from her, as if this was the very thing she'd needed him for.

She calms and adjusts herself, pulling off her gloves to light a cigar with a shaky hand. She lets out a puff, then turns, sees that one portrait had escaped her rampage, lying whole and untouched amongst the piles of ripped pages, black and white leaves fallen to the ground.

She finishes her cigar- though she doesn't quite enjoy it- and moves to pick up the page. It's unfinished, started late last night, and she can't find it in her to rip it. She stares, the image only half done, and thinks that perhaps keeping one image of Alucard isn't so bad.

She's angry and hurt and betrayed. But damn it she fears the day she forgets his face.

She moves to find her charcoal, and when she does, she feels a sharp sting and looks to see she's given herself a paper cut.

Her finger instantly moves toward her mouth to catch the blood, warm tongue giving pressure to stop the bleeding, but as it reaches her lips, she pauses. Staring at her finger, she sees the blood that had given Alucard life once before, and then looks at the half-finished drawing in her hand and thinks, foolishly, hopefully, _Why not?_

She takes finger to parchment, squeezing to draw more blood, and she runs her finger over the page, his image half-black, half-red.

She finishes, feels a little dizzy, then squeezes her finger one last time, smearing blood over the hollow of his eyes, then once more over the crooked grin.

He looks more like Alucard now than he has in thirty years.

_"A flattering likeness, Master."_

Integra stiffens. She hasn't heard that voice in thirty years, but she _knows_ it. Wonders how she could have ever forgotten it in the first place. She turns, and instead of being greeted by the sight of a thousand two-dimensional Alucard's, she's greeted by one- red and black and white and very much real.

He's seated amongst the scraps of her creation and destruction, and he weakly lifts a few pieces to eye them critically.

_"You've been busy."_

She shuts her eyes, wills herself to awaken from this tormented dream, and when she opens her eyes, he's still there, grinning- weakly, but wickedly.

It takes her only a moment, but suddenly she's a little girl again and she drops the paper and she _runs_ to him, real and returned to her, and he looks just as she's always remembered.


End file.
